Holborn Empire

Holborn Empire, London, in High Holborn. As Weston's Music-Hall, this opened in 1857, and proved the first serious rival to the Canterbury. It had a consistently successful career, being renamed the Royal Music-Hall in 1868. Rebuilt in 1887, it opened as the Royal Holborn and saw the débuts of many famous music-hall stars, among them Bessie Bellwood and J. H. Stead; its Chairman for many years was W. B. Fair, singer of ‘Tommy, Make Room for Your Uncle’. Round about 1900 its popularity began to decline, and it closed in 1905. Completely rebuilt, it reopened in 1906 as the Holborn Empire, and was occasionally used for plays, Sybil Thorndike appearing there early in 1920 in the title-roles of Shaw's Candida and Euripides' Medea, and as Hecuba in the latter's Trojan Women. From 1922 to 1939 the children's play Where the Rainbow Ends was given an annual Christmas production by Italia Conti. In 1932 Nellie Wallace appeared in The Queen of Hearts, a revue by Tom Arnold, and at the end of 1939 another revue, Haw-Haw!, was staged. In 1941 the building was severely damaged by enemy action; it was finally demolished in 1960.